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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30081807">Double the prize, and then some</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/unnieunnie/pseuds/unnieunnie'>unnieunnie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>EXO (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adventures on trains, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Aristocrat Jongdae, Brief mentions of other Exos, Fake Drunkenness, Kidnapping, M/M, Thief Minseok, plans gone awry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-04-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 20:19:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,664</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30081807</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/unnieunnie/pseuds/unnieunnie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt 505: Local thief Minseok was sure that kidnapping the duke's son and asking for a ransom would solve all of his money problems.</p><p>What he wasn't expecting was receiving twice the ransom he asked for and a note: 'Make sure he doesn't come back'</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kim Jongdae | Chen/Kim Minseok | Xiumin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>130</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>SnowSpark Fest Round Two</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Double the prize, and then some</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The plan worked perfectly: as it damn well should have, given all the effort Minseok had put into it. He heaved the unconscious body of the Duke’s son into the prepared bed, twitched a blanket over him, and bolted the door behind him.</p><p>It had all gone exactly to plan. Kyungsoo’s map of the palace had proved accurate. Yixing’s climbing gear had held. Chanyeol’s two potions – one for sleep and one for strength – continued to hold their effects. Minseok felt as if he could lift a tiger over his head, and the Duke’s son snored in the cot Minseok had set up in the cell he had built into his attic room.</p><p>For another 20 minutes or so, Minseok flew around his room, tidying and smirking with self-pride, until the potion wore off abruptly. He sat down on the floor, dust rag still in one hand. The full weight of his 30 years seemed to perch on the very top of his head, which made his neck ache. Now that he thought about it, his entire body ached: almost as if he had snuck across town, climbed a tower, briefly fought a nobleman, then carried said sleeping nobleman back down the tower and across town all over again.</p><p>Minseok grinned to himself, cleaned his teeth, and went to bed.</p><p>If it had been up to him, he would’ve slept away most of the next day. His captive, however, was up bright and early, pounding on the door of his cell and yelling in a voice pitched to carry horribly throughout the room. Minseok almost levitated out of his skin at the start of it. But once he had recovered his breath and checked the expensive soundproofing wards he’d placed in each corner, he slid open the face grate to look at his prisoner.</p><p>“You son of a bitch, no matter what it is you think you want, you’ll never get away with this,” the man snarled.</p><p>Jongdae, the Duke’s second son, was known for his handsome face and sunny personality. “Premier chatterbox of the land,” they wrote about him.</p><p>Said handsome face work a ferocious scowl at the moment.</p><p>“I’ll thank you not to impugn my late mother’s memory,” Minseok said. “In any case, all I want from you is to wait until your ransom is paid. Let me know if the chamberpot gets full.”</p><p>Jongdae growled and flung himself away from the grate. Minseok thought it wise to shut the cover before anything unpleasant could be flung at him.</p><p>The man kept up a loud, curse-filled commentary for the next hour, until the scent of Minseok cooking breakfast made a brief silence. Minseok looked over his shoulder at the closed door.</p><p>“Is any of that for me?” the Duke’s son asked after a moment, considerably quieter and less rude.</p><p>Minseok felt himself smirk. He made a tray of grilled eel and stew and stood by the door for several breaths before he opened the grate.</p><p>“Some of it is for you,” he said to the handsome face pressed up against the door. “But only if you promise to behave.”</p><p>Jongdae’s wide eyes went half-mast, and he gave a slow smile.</p><p>“I can behave,” he purred.</p><p>As a member of the city’s underworld, Minseok was used to friends (and occasionally himself) trading flesh for favors or gifts. It was a bit jarring to hear such an offer from one the elite. Also a little insulting that the man thought he was that stupid.</p><p>“Step back to the cot, please. Sit down, hands under your legs.”</p><p>Jongdae scowled but did as he was told. It gave Minseok room to unlock the door and swiftly set the tray on the floor, then back out again before Jongdae would have time to attack him.</p><p>“Hey!” he shouted a moment later, causing Minseok to nearly fall off his cushion. “This is really good! How come you’re a criminal instead of a palace cook?”</p><p>It took some of the savor out of what had been an excellent breakfast. Minseok had his kitchen knife in his hand when he knocked sharply on the door afterward.</p><p>“Tray on the floor, please,” he said.</p><p>Jongdae’s eyes were wide when he set it down (polished clean) and back away to sit on the bed, hands under his legs.</p><p>“I have a friend who was a palace cook. The burns all over his hands and forearms might be excused as a work hazard. But the day they cut off his little finger for putting <em>one bun</em> in his pocket to take home to his elderly mother was enough to convince me that no good can come from that place.”</p><p>With his mouth handing open, the Duke’s son looked like a boy.</p><p>The plan would never have worked without Kyungsoo’s map of the palace. He didn’t know it, but Minseok planned to give him a big enough cut of the ransom to let him leave this cursed city too.</p><p>As he washed dishes, Minseok heard soft knocking at the cell door.</p><p>“Excuse me? Excuse me?” Jongdae called out, no longer pitched for annoyance.</p><p>Minseok sighed. He finished the dishes before stepping over.</p><p>“What is it?” he asked through the grate. “Is the chamber pot full?”</p><p>Jongdae blushed as red as a lucky temple lantern.</p><p>“It’s – fine,” he said. “I wanted. Is it true what you said about your friend? And his finger?”</p><p>“It is.”</p><p>Jongdae frowned.</p><p>“I’m sorry about that. That isn’t right,” he said after a pause.</p><p>“Thanks, that’ll definitely make the stump of Soo’s finger better,” Minseok said.</p><p>One thing Minseok hadn’t accounted for – which seemed obvious in retrospect, given the whole “premier chatterbox in the land” thing – was that the 2 days between kidnap and ransom delivery would be so very full of commentary.</p><p>He wanted to know about Kyungsoo. When the silence from Minseok’s side of the door stretched out, he had well over an hour’s tirade about misunderstandings, excuses, and slights on Soo’s character, until Minseok pounded on the door several times and shocked Jongdae into nearly 5 whole minutes of silence.</p><p>There followed from there a long, loud diatribe about Minseok’s character and how his criminal behavior must surely be compensation for manly inadequacy.</p><p>Having been friends with Byun Baekhyun for most of his life, that kind of nonsense was easy for Minseok to ignore.</p><p>The several hours of bawdy tavern songs were not. Minseok hadn’t even known that “Skin His Balls with a Paring Knife” had more than 20 verses.</p><p>He very sincerely hoped his friends would never discover this fact.</p><p>The noise went on for hours, until Minseok’s shoulders ached with the tension of never having space for a single quiet thought. He chewed resentfully through a cold dinner while Jongdae was busy reciting the list of his ancestors back to the beginning of time, it seemed.</p><p>After human bloodlines came those of the Duke’s hunting horses. Minseok wrenched the door open and found himself nose to nose with his captive, who blinked, swallowed once, and stumbled back a step.</p><p>“I’ll gag you if you don’t stop,” Minseok said.</p><p>Jongdae retreated to his cot and sat down, hands under his legs. As a reward, Minseok brought him a cup of water and some fruit.</p><p>Jongdae started singing again deep into the night: half a verse of something Minseok didn’t know, just enough to startle Minseok out of sleep, before he stopped. When Minseok looked through the grate, Jongdae was still and turned away on the cot.</p><p>This happened three more times before dawn: one small snatch of noise sufficient to bring Minseok jumping out of sleep, heart pounding, but a still form on the cot, enough to make Minseok doubt his own ears and nerves and leave him frazzled in the morning.</p><p>Just in time for a day full of traditional poetry and military songs.</p><p>Minseok thought he would honestly have rather been hit in the face with the full chamberpot.</p><p>Near sunset, Jongdae’s voice was a bit scratchy, but that didn’t stop him. He was in the middle of a poem about the creation of the 5 worlds. As far as Minseok remembered from his sketchy schooling, there was at least another hour left.</p><p> </p><p>Minseok snuck out his own door without saying anything. Let Jongdae shout to the empty air. Maybe he’d be worn out later. In the hallway, on the other side of the quiet wards, Minseok sighed his relief and let himself breathe into the silence until his ears stopped ringing.</p><p>He slipped through the shadows across town to the place he’d set in his instructions. The velvet bag hidden in the potted lemon tree was heavier than Minseok expected. He didn’t stop to examine it, of course, until he was safe back at home behind his own door.</p><p>Another long classical poem was going, this one full of royal genealogy, still loud but quite hoarse. Minseok dumped the bag’s contents onto his bed. And dumped more. And more still: a pile of cut jewels as high as his wrist that had him gaping. It was easily twice what he’d asked for. What on earth?</p><p>The contents of the folded note on top of the pile took a bit of the joy out of his long-desired wealth. He read it, set it down, read it again. Made several anxious circuits of his room, read the note again. For lack of any other idea, Minseok opened the door to the cell.</p><p>Jongdae stopped shouting mid-stanza and stared, chin jutted out, fists clenched. Minseok stared at him. When Jongdae inhaled, clearly ready to launch into more shouting, Minseok thrust the note at him.</p><p>Jongdae read the note with the official seal of the Duke his father at the bottom reading, “Ensure he does not return.”</p><p>Jongdae nodded once. He dropped the note to the floor and walked to his cot, where he lay down carefully with his face to the wall.</p><p>Minseok, at a loss for what else he could possibly do, left. He pulled the door shut but didn’t bolt it. Jongdae wasn’t a prisoner anymore. Minseok had no idea what he was.</p><p>The next part of Minseok’s carefully constructed plan was delayed while Minseok dithered around his room, distressed for the nobleman who was supposed to be unconscious again at this point, over Minseok’s shoulder on his way back to the rich side of town. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.</p><p>On the other hand, he could return the potions to Chanyeol and leave town as planned. He had at least twice as many jewels as he’d demanded. He could leave a couple for Jongdae. A pair of shoes and some clothes, since he’d been abducted from his bed. Minseok would even leave some copper and silver pennies for him, to get him to a neighborhood fancy enough to make the gems useful.</p><p>He’d be fine. He’d grown up with tutors and travels and all sorts of advantages, after all. Minseok had his reward. Jongdae was no longer his problem. Minseok packed what few belongings he’d bother to keep in one bag, the unused potions and Yixing’s climbing gear in another. He carefully divided the gems among various pockets, under a double layer of socks in his boots, and tucked into various pockets and small tins in his bag.</p><p>He was sitting at his rough table chewing on a pencil stub, trying to think what to write, when the door the cell opened. Jongdae had the note crumpled in his hand, and his eyes were red.</p><p>“What now?” he asked. “I have nothing to offer you to make it quick, other than to beg. Which I will do, if you like.”</p><p>Minseok felt his face attempt to reflect the tangle of responses he had to that. He settled for a frown.</p><p>“The only thing I’m making quick is my exit,” he said.</p><p>Jongdae sighed heavily and hung his head. Minseok gritted his teeth.</p><p>“I mean, my idiot lord, that I have no interest in killing you.”</p><p>Jongdae stared at him, eyes wide.</p><p>“I’m no murderer. All I wanted was for some of your family’s hoard to rain down far enough to reach me. And I have it.”</p><p>“You? What about me?”</p><p>Minseok allowed that it was a reasonable question from any erstwhile prisoner and not simply the selfishness of the hereditary wealthy.</p><p>“I’ve left you clothes and shoes.”</p><p>Minseok gestured toward them on the floor.</p><p>“You’ve saved me the trouble of writing a note. I’ll be more generous with my wealth than your family has been. There’s enough here to get you out of this neighborhood and keep you housed and fed until you can learn to pay your own way. If you spend wisely. And if you don’t, it’s no worry of mine.”</p><p>Minseok picked up his bags.</p><p>“You’re leaving?” Jongdae squawked.</p><p>“I am. Rent’s paid up here through the end of the month. But the sound wards wear out day after tomorrow, and the sex worker downstairs specializes in beatings. Good luck.”</p><p>When Jongdae caught up with him at the corner, Minseok cursed himself for (a) whistling his way down the block and thus not hearing the man behind him and (b) walking out in the open like a law-abiding citizen, when he had all these perfectly good sneaking skills.</p><p>Jongdae was still in his days-old nightshirt, Minseok’s clothes clutched to his chest and the shoes unlaced. Someone wolf-whistled, and Jongdae blushed.</p><p>“What are you doing?” Minseok asked.</p><p>“I don’t know anyone,” Jongdae said. “If I can’t go home. I don’t. I don’t know anything else.”</p><p>“Not my concern.”</p><p>It was a long walk to Kyungsoo’s shop. Minseok knew Jongdae continued to follow him mostly from all the jeers and laughing. He glanced back a few times to see the stubborn expression on Jongdae’s face, staring at the sidewalk with the clothes held to his chest and his skinny, hairy shins poking out from the bottom of his grubby nightshirt.</p><p>The farther they walked, the more Minseok’s irritation wore down into a weary almost-admiration. Over an hour of constant mocking and rude propositions in unlaced shoes and clothing inadequate for both modesty and the cold would be enough to defeat almost anyone. But Jongdae didn’t complain once. When his face started to look drawn, Minseok slowed his pace to make sure the hapless idiot didn’t get lost.</p><p>Just outside Soo’s door, he waited for Jongdae to catch up. Jongdae’s lips were blue, teeth chattering.</p><p>Minseok sighed and pushed through the door. He sighed again later when he pushed his way back out, exasperated that Jongdae was clothed in his cast-offs and chewing a day-old bun like it was ambrosia but apparently still determined to follow him. Yixing made vague noises of sympathy and helpfulness in Jongdae’s direction, to no avail, when Minseok returned the climbing gear and exchanged a handful gems for more-useful coin. By the time they mounted the stairs to Chanyeol’s attic, Minseok was resigned.</p><p>Normally he would’ve held out hope: Chanyeol enjoyed adopting strays, feeding them up, and finding them proper homes. Surely he could do for a duke’s son what he regularly did for mangy cats. But Baekhyun was between grifts and was currently occupying all of Chanyeol’s extra meal-planning energy. It was a near thing, though, if Chanyeol’s wide eyes, hugging of a startled Jongdae, and whispered “take care of that cute little thing, Min” were anything to go by.</p><p>At least he and Jongdae were outfitted more respectably from Baekhyun’s trunks when they left. And that was that. Minseok had completed his business in the city of his birth.</p><p>“What now?” Jongdae asked, sounding hesitant, when Minseok stopped in to stare around.</p><p>It was late, by this time. All according to plan. Minseok had desired this for years, had finally pulled it off.</p><p>A hand touched his forearm – pale, stubby, well-manicured fingers, slightly grubby. Jongdae was supposed to be home by now, cosseted by his awful family. In the bath, maybe, with a parade of servants bringing his favorite dishes on golden platters, the Duke declaring a manhunt that would mean Minseok had to keep his head low for the next couple of years, traveling the continent under expensive assumed names.</p><p>But Jongdae was here. Tired, underfed, and probably dirtier than he had ever been in his life. Following a complete stranger – his kidnapper – as the safest and most well-known option.</p><p>What had he done?</p><p>“Are you all right?” Jongdae asked.</p><p>Minseok shook himself.</p><p>“Of course,” he said. “The train station is next, for the night train south.”</p><p>“Both of us?” Jongdae asked of Minseok’s right bicep.</p><p>What had he done, indeed.</p><p>“Do I have any choice in the matter?” Minseok asked lightly. “I assumed you would follow no matter what. The past several days have suggested that you excel at stubbornness.”</p><p>Jongdae wrinkled his nose and smiled briefly. He tossed his head.</p><p>“I do generally get my way,” he said.</p><p>Minseok had been to the train station exactly twice – once as an inept young thief (resulting in his first stint in the local jail) and once to case it pre-kidnapping, so he would look like he knew what he was doing. This didn’t work as well as he wanted. He was able to walk straight to the ticket booth and request a ticket to the end of the train line at the far side of the southern desert, but the ticket-seller’s face closed off like a door when he said “one of the rooms, with a bed.”</p><p>“Beg pardon sir, we have only third-class carriage tickets available.”</p><p>Minseok wasn’t sure what “third-class” meant, other than an overnight trip that did not include a bed and probably ran a high risk of pickpockets. Jongdae stepped forward.</p><p>“Don’t be ridiculous, you know you always reserve a sleeper car for last-minute bookings from drunk aristos needing to get out of town. I guarantee by the time we embark we’ll <em>both</em> be well past drunk enough to forget the what the sleeper car’s called, my friend. If you sell us a top-level pass to the sauna as well, I’m sure we’ll find a little extra for you to keep.”</p><p>Jongdae slung one arm around Minseok’s shoulders, cocked his hip, and grinned at the ticket seller.</p><p>“Sir, I’m not at liber– “</p><p>“Sure you are,” Jongdae said in a voice notably deeper than usual. “You are at <em>such</em> liberty to sell us that ticket, and the pass, so my … friend … and I can take our own liberties, right?”</p><p>The hand on Minseok’s shoulder reached up to trace the outer edge of his ear, and Minseok found himself in possession of a wholly new reaction toward his erstwhile captive. He didn’t intend to, er, giggle. But he did.</p><p>The ticket-seller smirked in a way that just begged for a punch, but Jongdae ignored it, paying an amount for the two tickets and two sauna passes that Minseok thought was well beyond exorbitant. He didn’t argue. He leaned into Jongdae as if he were tipsy, staggered a little as they turned and made their way across the train station.</p><p>“Keep that up,” Jongdae murmured in his ear.</p><p>It was a game well-known to Minseok: loll his head against Jongdae’s shoulder, trip over his own feet, mumble a bit while Jongdae sweet-talked the sauna attendant and handed over more of Minseok’s coin. It was more than he had planned on spending.</p><p>On the other hand, the belt on his purse had twice the amount of gems he’d planned on, so it hardly mattered.</p><p>Jongdae negotiated a private room for them, a meal and drinks. The attendants didn’t even try to hide their smirks – they must not have recognized Jongdae, only the coin. Once bottles, trays, and towels were stacked by the doorway, Jongdae locked the door.</p><p>Minseok dropped the drunk act and balanced on the balls of his feet. But Jongdae leaned against the door and gave a long, loud exhale. He put one hand against his forehead and laughed a little.</p><p>“It worked!” he said. “I can’t believe it worked! We’re as good as escaped now, all we need do is wait until it’s time to board the train.”</p><p>He brought the tray of drinks and food to the low table in the center of the room and sat. Minseok only hesitated for a breath before he sat too.</p><p>“That was a neat trick, about the extra car?”</p><p>Jongdae shrugged.</p><p>“My brother and his friends have taken it plenty of times.”</p><p>“Never you?” Minseok asked.</p><p>Jongdae shook his head.</p><p>“Not me,” he said. “Family goody two-shoes.”</p><p>It was spoken lightly while Jongdae uncorked the bottle of rice wine and poured out two cups. But there was a crease between Jongdae’s brows.</p><p>The crease disappeared as soon as Jongdae had tossed back his cup and looked over at the mostly filled tub, steaming hot. He stripped down without shame – Minseok watched without shame. He had expected Jongdae to look soft, but his small body was nicely muscled, with fine proportions that made an excellent view as he scrubbed himself clean. Jongdae’s groan, as he sat down into the water, was probably that of a man who had badly wanted a bath, but it sounded filthy.</p><p>Minseok had a second cup of rice wine before he rose to scrub until his skin buzzed, then climb into the tub across from Jongdae. He held back his own groan. This tub was deeper, and the water hotter, than any bath he’d been in since that glorious time 6 years previously when he broke into an empty merchant’s villa and lived there for a week of warmth, ease, and moving armloads of valuables out daily.</p><p>“I’m not going to complain about my treatment, since you didn’t subject me to anything worse than a chamberpot and too many days in the same nightshirt. But by the moon’s cold embrace, I’m glad to be in a proper bath.”</p><p>Minseok considered what might be an appropriate response to this, but before he came up with anything, Jongdae was off on the topic of how he had never been to the sauna in the train station before – in fact, his experiences of train travel hadn’t ever involved the station at all, the Duke having his own embarkation platform (away from the press of the odiferous peasantry, Minseok supposed), but trains of course were a superior mode of travel, etc., etc., which took them through their soak, their post-soak meal, and back out to the train platform, where the first-class porter glared at their single rucksack and their bumbling drunkenness act.</p><p>Minseok followed Jongdae down the train’s corridor. The carpet was dark blue and so thick that they walked silently. He couldn’t imagine how they had filament lamps inside a moving vehicle. The porter led them to a door at the end of the car, opened it, and gestured them in.</p><p>The room was tiny, but so tidy that Minseok was instantly charmed by it: a bed, folded down from the wall and braced by gleaming chains, made up with bedding that looked more like a cloud than any bed Minseok had ever seen; a tiny water closet and sink with a door that cleverly slid in and out of the wall for privacy; and under the large window, a small square table and two chairs with plush cushions, a water carafe and glasses resting in indentations in the wood, a stationery set in an open box next to them.</p><p>“So. Where are we headed?” Jongdae asked when the porter had left.</p><p>After all his chatter, Minseok was surprised by the hesitancy in his question.</p><p>“Wherever looks like a good place to stop running,” Minseok said.</p><p>Though, of course, he didn’t really have to run now, did he? Knowing that no one would come after him.</p><p>Jongdae nodded, then pulled the curtains shut over the window as the train began to move. Minseok was just starting to contemplate the awkwardness, when Jongdae said,</p><p>“I don’t think I can be awake anymore.”</p><p>He climbed into the bed, rolling close up against the wall with his back to the room. Minseok gazed at the forlorn-looking lump until his day’s endeavors suddenly caught up with him too. He cleaned his teeth as well as he could at the tiny sink, noted that he was the holder of all the money and the brains of this operation, so there was no way in the 6 limbos that he was going to sleep on the cold floor, turned off the lamp, and climbed into the bed next to Jongdae.</p><p>The mattress felt as much like a cloud as it looked. The sheets were smooth and scented with herbs. The blanket was big enough to cover Minseok’s feet <em>and</em> chin. Sleep yanked him into darkness.</p><p>It took him a moment, later, to realize that the sound that woke him was Jongdae weeping.</p><p>Minseok had been orphaned when he was 9 and spent his first few years on the streets as part of an ever-evolving clump of children who slept wherever they could. Even after he joined Suho’s Marauders and had a bed that he only had to share with one other child, Minseok was long acquainted with the sound of someone trying to hide their tears.</p><p>He didn’t know Jongdae – maybe it would be better to pretend to still be asleep and ignore that hitching little breath and the way the man’s shoulders shook. On the other hand, technically this was his fault. Obviously, if the Duke wanted his younger son dead, he would’ve found a way to make it happen even if Minseok hadn’t kidnapped him, but still.</p><p>Minseok knew what it was like to feel alone. He reached out and placed a hand on Jongdae’s shoulder. Jongdae shuddered.</p><p>He rolled over and pressed against Minseok’s body, face burrowed in his neck. Minseok took a moment of total blankness, then draped an arm over Jongdae’s back. Jongdae responded by pressing even closer.</p><p>He was as cozy as a hot-water bottle. If he hadn’t been crying, Minseok would’ve put his cold feet on Jongdae’s to warm up.</p><p>“Why?” Jongdae said, his wail muffled against Minseok’s neck. “Why would they tell you? Why don’t they? I don’t understand.”</p><p>Minseok smoothed the hair at the back of Jongdae’s head.</p><p>“I don’t know.”</p><p>The same thing played out over the next half-hour or so. Minseok had no answers to Jongdae’s unanswerable questions. Minseok figured it had to do with money somehow, but during emotional distress in the middle of the night was no time for logic. It was a time for comforting murmurs and soft hands, until Jongdae cried himself to sleep.</p><p>He was a clingy sleeper, and the train car was an unfamiliar place, which meant that Minseok got very little rest, so they were both squinty and mumbling in the morning. Minseok froze at the knock to their door, and Jongdae patted him. He gathered up their previous day’s clothes and handed them to the person on the other side.</p><p>“Laundry service. We’ll have them back by luncheon,” Jongdae said.</p><p>Minseok, who tended to wear clothes 3 or 4 times between washings whenever possible and had never to his knowledge ever eaten “luncheon,” nodded. He dozed while Jongdae washed up and tried to keep his sighs to a minimum when the room steamed up from Jongdae using all the hot water, then marveled at his own shower, blazing hot no matter how long he fumbled around, knocking his elbows and knees in the tiny cubicle and fumbling for the fancy, floral-scented washes. Even the towels were soft as dreams.</p><p>They didn’t speak about the middle of the night. Instead, Minseok emerged from the water closet, towel-drying his hair, to find Jongdae sitting at the little table, now with a wheeled cart to one side of it, a china cup in one hand that Minseok thought he could probably pawn for two whole silver pieces.</p><p>“I ordered breakfast,” Jongdae said. “I didn’t know what you like, so I got some of everything.”</p><p>“How much is all of this?” Minseok asked – the habit of a lifetime, not yet broken.</p><p>Jongdae shrugged.</p><p>“Included with the ticket price.”</p><p>Minseok puffed out his cheeks in surprise, then ate until his stomach ached. They dressed in their spare outfits from Baekhyun’s trunk and wandered the train: the lounge car behind them, the bar car, full already, several cars down. The noise and wind between cars made Minseok’s breath catch in his throat. The first time, he reached out for Jongdae’s arm without thinking.</p><p>Jongdae grasped his hand and grinned back at him, then pulled him along. Minseok knew he’d have stood out like a pig at a garden party if Jongdae hadn’t been with him to ease the way. And with Jongdae seemingly happy to act as a tour guide, the day passed without any awkward silences between, say, an unwanted nobleman and his erstwhile kidnapper.</p><p>Later, they draped themselves across chairs in the bar car, sipping at wine so smooth that Minseok was afraid to refill his own glass, in case he got drunk and woke up the next morning without either his – a – nobleman or his bag of gems.</p><p>The train slowed at a station; Jongdae turned to face him, smiling just as a shaft of late-afternoon sunlight slid over his face. It made Jongdae look as if he were made of gold and joy, and Minseok bit his own tongue in case he said something stupid.</p><p>“Any more thoughts on where we’re headed? The end of the line is a week away, but I hope you’re not actually dragging me all the way to the desert,” Jongdae laughed.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Minseok said. “I figured I’d get off the train at whatever stop looked welcoming.”</p><p>“Oh.”</p><p>Jongdae sounded breathy.</p><p>“That’s kind of romantic.”</p><p>Minseok had to laugh.</p><p>“I hadn’t thought of it that way. I was mostly thinking of a place ramshackle enough to have a police force that wouldn’t cooperate with your father.”</p><p>Then he felt like a jerk. After a moment, Jongdae laughed too – briefly, and a little awkwardly, but a laugh nonetheless.</p><p>That evening, in the dining car, Jongdae was in the middle of an amusing story about an opera singer and a stage accident highly damaging to the bodice of her costume, when the smile evaporated from his face.</p><p>Minseok set down his glass of wine softly. Jongdae was staring over his shoulder.</p><p>“What is it?” Minseok asked, trying to keep his voice quiet but light.</p><p>Jongdae turned to the dark window next to them, the shadows of trees rushing by outside and the dining car reflected dimly. He dipped his chin, and Minseok could see him watching the reflection of whatever it was he saw.</p><p>“I think the woman behind you has just been drugged,” Jongdae said.</p><p>Minseok watched the way Jongdae clenched his jaw and stared at the reflection in the dark glass. He clutched his chopsticks in one hand: an immediate desire to fix and protect, like he had at the train station, and this morning. Would he be as stubborn about it as he had been, following Minseok through town in his filthy nightshirt?</p><p>Minseok found himself grateful that his home city’s Duke was even worse than anticipated and had saddled him with an unwanted son.</p><p>“Just like the ticket booth,” he said.</p><p>Jongdae’s eyes cut to him; he smiled briefly and nodded. Minseok downed the rest of the wine in his glass, laughed high and loud, and let his head loll back until it knocked into the woman behind him.</p><p>From there, it was as easy as skimming from the till at an orgy. Minseok turned to slur an apology at the woman, then wormed his way around to sitting next to her, one arm slung over her shoulders while they mumbled sorries at each other. Her pupils were wide, and her breath smelled bitter. Definitely drugged.</p><p>Jongdae chattered at the woman’s dining companion, laughing about how he couldn’t take Minseok anywhere civilized and spinning a long tale of sexual misadventure that would’ve been embarrassing if it’d been one-eighth true, but Minseok knew the other people in the dining car would only remember the lurid details, not the faces of the men involved.</p><p>“Not like that,” he slurred while the woman’s head lolled against his shoulder.</p><p>Her companion was scowling but didn’t have the wits to deflect Jongdae’s ceaseless talk.</p><p>“Don’t try to deny it, my little meat bun. You rode that silver cock like you were competing in the decennial games. I’d have paid triple the price for your favors, but you’re so thirsty for it, I got you at a bargain!”</p><p>Minseok giggled on the outside, and internally vowed to toss Jongdae off the train.</p><p>He did note close attention from the matrons at the table across the aisle, and slouched in his chair, legs wide apart, just to cause more of a scene. The woman was starting to pant against the side of his neck: she would be glad of her sleeper room as soon as possible, and a maid or porter to hold her hair back and help her clean up.</p><p>One of the matrons raised a lorgnette to stare at Minseok’s crotch. Then his view was obstructed by a porter’s dark blue uniform.</p><p>“Perhaps you’d like to rest in your cabins,” the porter said.</p><p>The woman’s companion protested briefly, but Jongdae talked over him, a loud litany of the kinds of things even Baekhyun would charge extra for on a job, and he was a pervert. Minseok kept hold of the woman, mumbling and pushing at her companion until he gave up under the united front of Minseok’s fake drunken stubbornness, the porter’s blank insistence that they leave, the woman’s inability to stand on her own, and Jongdae’s enthusiastic description of a collection of sexual aids that they most certainly did not have in their nonexistent luggage.</p><p>Once they left the dining car, Jongdae stopped speaking and Minseok stood upright. The porter blinked at them.</p><p>“Do you have a doctor on staff? This woman has been drugged,” Jongdae said.</p><p>The porter took barely a breath to gather herself and adjust.</p><p>“It’s a basic potion, based on tincture of valerian,” Minseok said. “I recognize the smell. She’ll be nauseated soon, and need someone to help her stay upright until she metabolizes it.”</p><p>The porter’s glance at him was sharp.</p><p>“We’ve an apothecaric witch riding the route tonight. She’s in cabin twelve, just down from yours. If you’ll meet me there, sirs.”</p><p>They handed the woman over to the witch and the porter and retreated to their cabin, thankfully before the woman started vomiting. Once the door was shut, Jongdae put his hands on his own shoulders.</p><p>“That was terrifying!” he said.</p><p>Minseok had to grin at him.</p><p>“You were wonderful. You did everything right.”</p><p>“How’d you know what she was drugged with?”</p><p>Minseok shrugged.</p><p>“I recognized the smell. It’s a cheap potion, available anywhere. There are lots of reasons why people want someone sleepy and suggestible. That’s about the worst one, though. It’s good that you saw.”</p><p>Jongdae nodded, frowning. Then a sly grin slid across his face. Minseok was reminded of the past half-hour’s litany of filthy commentary.</p><p>“We made a good team, right? It was like you could read my mind!”</p><p>Post-adventure adrenaline made Minseok’s mouth run away with itself.</p><p>“Who needed to read your mind when you mouth was running as fast as this train?”</p><p>Jongdae gaped at him, then laughed. He stepped close – closer than was wise.</p><p>“Maybe you’re tired of me talking your ears off, the past few days,” he murmured. “Maybe you’d like to shut me up.”</p><p>So Minseok did, before he could think about it. He leaned in to cover that smiling mouth with his own. He had to tilt his chin slightly up to do so, but Jongdae’s waist was slim as a sapling between his hands. Minseok tasted the wine they’d shared on Jongdae’s tongue.</p><p>“This is extremely unwise,” he said when he drew back and pressed their foreheads together.</p><p>“Are we doing wisdom? I thought we were doing peril and escape,” Jongdae said.</p><p>He bent his head and kissed along the side of Minseok’s neck.</p><p>“I don’t want,” Minseok said.</p><p>Jongdae raised his head to stare, but he also continued to press his body close and slid one hand down to cup Minseok’s ass.</p><p>“You don’t want? I could sleep sitting up in the lounge car, I suppose.”</p><p>Minseok grabbed him.</p><p>“That’s not what I meant.”</p><p>Jongdae grinned.</p><p>“You let me follow you,” he said. “The only reason I know your name is because I heard it from Kyungsoo, but you let me follow you all across down in my nightshirt, and you never really tried to ditch me.”</p><p>Minseok tried to flinch, but it was stymied by the hand on his ass.</p><p>“Tell me how I felt more cared for by you in your little locked room with a brass chamberpot than I did in my father’s palace.”</p><p>Jongdae’s voice was low, urgent, and it seemed pitched to speak directly to Minseok’s prick.</p><p>“I never wanted harm to come to you,” he said.</p><p>Jongdae pulled him even closer.</p><p>“I’ve had no harm at your hands, Minseok, no matter how hard I tried to bait you.”</p><p>“The note – “</p><p>Jongdae kissed him roughly, until they both fought for breath.</p><p>“That note is no fault of yours. You probably saved my life, if that’s what my father thinks about me. I’m not stupid, for all that he and my brother think I’m naïve as a lamb. All the things I knew about life in my father’s city, all the suffering and unfairness – I can’t pretend I don’t see it anymore, thanks to you. You saved my life, Minseok but you also forced me to open my eyes.”</p><p>Minseok felt dizzy with the press of Jongdae’s body against his own and too many words to process, too important to disregard.</p><p>“What are you saying?”</p><p>Jongdae smiled at him, broad and slow.</p><p>“I’m saying that I want to suck you until you spend on my face. I want you to bring me off with one hand and keep me quiet with the other. I want to sleep next to you for a second night, a third, and a fortieth. I want to follow you off this train, and find out whether you want to laze about on a beach for the rest of your life, or whether you want to regroup, plan, and go back north to shove a hot poker up my father’s ass and set his city free. Whatever you do, I want to do it with you.”</p><p>Minseok felt the future unfurl like a banner: every dark, vengeful dream he’d ever had, made possible by a pouch full of gemstones and one angry aristo.</p><p>“Is that all?” Minseok asked.</p><p>“All is what it is,” Jongdae said.</p><p>“Then you’d better get on your knees.”</p><p>And Jongdae did, with a filthy smile and filthier mouth, smiling under closed eyes when Minseok spurted across his features. Minseok didn’t let him clean up, making him come both eyes closed and mouth covered, trying to buck against Minseok’s stronger hold.</p><p>“We’ll let them think they’ve won,” Minseok said to him when Jongdae’s breath started to slow, biting at the back of his neck.</p><p>“Yes,” Jongdae murmured.</p><p>“You’ll show me how to act like the high born, and I’ll teach you how we disappear into the dark.”</p><p>“Min,” Jongdae said, pressing back against him.</p><p>“We’ll take them down, Jongdae.”</p><p>“Make them pay,” Jongdae said.</p><p>Shoved into that narrow bed, while the train rocked around them, Minseok wound his fingers into the hair at the back of Jongdae’s head and pulled until Jongdae hissed.</p><p>“For disappointing you, my prize? We will burn them to the ground.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for this great prompt! I hope the story is what you wanted.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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